In a lecture on Eddic poetry given at Oxford and here reprinted, Tolkien said that the poems had attracted "connoisseurs of new literary sensations" and the main aspect of that sensation was "an almost demonic energy and force".

I was surprised to walk into the reception and immediately run into Joe Harris, whose course on Eddic Poetry at Harvard was an important formative experience for me especially being then still an employee and not a "real" student; plus he's a great guy, creative and thoughtful.

Eddic lays, upon which the story of the _Ring_ is founded, the child of the unnatural union is not Sigurd, not the golden hero "whom every child loved," but the savage outlaw Sinfjötli, half wolf, half robber, one of the most terrible creations of mythology.

A very characteristic touch survives in Gregory of Tours (died 594), when the Frank Chlodvig tells his Christian wife that the Christian God "cannot be proved to be of the race of the Gods," an idea entirely in keeping with the Eddic hierarchy.